Susan Wojcicki: The most important Googler you've never heard of - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_17286427?nclick_check=1 <comment><USER2> I guess I could also comment about the article itself.

It's great that Susan is an influential level-headed intuitive executive at Google, and I suppose it's somewhat noteworthy that it was her garage that was originally used as Google's office, but aside from that I'm not sure what the point is. Her style is reminiscent of several senior vice presidents at several companies I've worked at, and her contributions don't seem manifestly larger then any other SVP in charge of a major project. Sure, she makes the most money at the company, but I'm not sure that entitles her to a special spot in Google's history at the same level as the other 12 SVPs and certainly not the founders themselves.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if the Mercury News is doing a series on some of the lesser-known Google leaders. They did a profile of my VP over the summer:

<http://www.physorg.com/news202108905.html>

I think it's a refreshing change from the mainstream press, which seems to be "All Marissa, all the time" when they're not talking about Page/Brin/Schmidt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> "Paul Buchheit, the founder of Gmail, had the idea to run ads within Google's e-mail service. But he and others say it was Wojcicki, with the backing of Brin, who organized the team that adapted that idea into an enormously successful product."

Nothing to do with the article, but I just find the "founder of Gmail" language a bit funny in this case. I don't normally associate the "founder" relationship with projects invested in and resourced (and, not to mention, wholly owned) by a large corporation. Being the initial developer != founder.

<comment><USER4> We often see the word "founder" used as an abbreviation of the phrase "startup founder", but that only applies when used in the context of discussing a startup.

The word itself is perfectly applicable in various contexts that have nothing to do with startup companies; charities, political parties, bands, and internal projects. As such, referring to Buchheit as the founder of Gmail is reasonable.

<comment><USER2> Internal projects is the one outlier there I don't agree with. At every single company I've worked in, I've spearheaded new ideas and new projects I think it would be worthwhile for the company to pursue. It has happened that the company chooses to invest in the idea I brought forward, but in that case I wouldn't consider myself the "founder" of "idea X". I was the origin of the idea, the main cheerleader, the developer of the prototype, the project manager, etc., but not the "founder".

I don't know, maybe it's an asinine point, but I don't think that's typically how the word founder is used, and it still seems funny to me.

<comment><USER3> I think people make an exception for GMail because in terms of innovativeness, it could easily have been a startup in its own right. People make similar exceptions for other companies, eg. Jef Raskin is often called "the founder of the Macintosh" despite it being developed inside Apple, Ray Ozzie is called "the founder of Lotus Notes" despite it being funded by Lotus.

<comment><USER5> But Ozzie was the Founder of Iris Associates -- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Associates> \-- who actually created Notes.

<comment><USER3> And (from the article) Iris development was funded almost exclusively by Lotus, under contract, with an exclusive option to purchase all the IP generated. That sounds a lot like a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Most laypeople think in terms of products, not corporate entities. The various international Google subsidiaries are all separate corporations, yet the lawyers & VPs who set them up aren't considered "founders" of them. Meanwhile, business units that operate with significant autonomy and generate a product that's distinct from the parent company's main business usually do have a "founder" figure.

Where would you put Android on this continuum? It's a business unit within Google now. However, it's run with a large degree of autonomy, has its own codebase, and creates a product quite distinct from Google. And moreover, it actually _was_ founded by Andy Rubin as an independent startup, but purchased well before they got to market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related article from 2007 that gives further information about Susan's house and her role in Google: [http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/corporatenews/2007...](http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/corporatenews/2007-07-04-google- wojcicki_N.htm)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly enough, her mother, Esther Wojcicki is a teacher at my school.</comment>


Ask HN: How to develop a growth mindset? - <AUTHOR> I've always considered myself as someone who can do X or can't do Y. I've learned new things, I've been creative and daring - at times.
But often times, when someone challenges me to do something new, I respond that I don't know how and would not be able t do it.
How do I turn that around? How do I develop a growth mindset? <comment><USER4> At one point I had a big realization that perfectionism was keeping me from ever going outside my comfort zone. This meant that for decades I had only really been growing in areas where I was naturally gifted and experienced (logic, math and similar) but failed to grow much in areas where I wasn't (e.g. emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills) because that way I never really had to fear failure, or challenge my self-image as 'someone who always succeeds'. I realized just how skewed that had made me - like a bodybuilder pumping iron with his strong arm, while the other arm hangs weakly by his side, atrophying. I realized how arrogant I had been to try to justify this neglect by thinking of the areas that I was bad at as less important than the ones I'm good at (they're not). And I realized how cowardly I had been to be so fearful of failure, how much it had hurt my mental health to tie up my self-worth with that self-image of someone that always succeeds. So I ate some humble pie, finally confronted my perfectionism, started focusing on strengthening my weak side, and adopted a new mantra: "If you never fail, you're not being ambitious enough". To this day, I still struggle to live up to this, but at least now I know what I'm up against, and what I'm trying to achieve - the clarity really helps.

<comment><USER5> There's an old saying that whatever is worth doing is worth doing badly. So true. When I was in Germany, they have a saying that you start with "something to hate". Already knowing that what you're about to do is going to be crap makes it easy to get going. Then you set about fixing your crappy beginning. It gets you unstuck.

<comment><USER4> That reminds me of a saying I heard when starting to learn the game Go: "Lose your first 50 games quickly"

<comment><USER6> I've heard a similar saying regarding songwriting, "your first 50 songs will suck, so get them out of the way quickly"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I want to make a case against having a "growth mindset". And against fighting procrastination. And any other self improvement stuff.

\- all these things happen at a much lower level than conscious thought. We have approaches to achieving based on genetics, early upbringing, life experiences, etc. No amount of wanting things to be different will make it so.

\- there are no recipes. There is just doing stuff, some will succeed, some will fail depending on a huge number of factors. No words from anybody will help in your particular situation for general questions like "how do I get better".

\- not wanting to do something (regardless of the perceived value of that something) is not always bad. Resources like time and energy are finite. Failure is costly and things like accelerated aging and burnout are real.

\- why would you necessarily do what somebody else says you should? Who benefits? For an HN related thing in particular: who benefits from everybody getting into programming and working after work to learn one more tech tool?

\- "self improvement" in general seems to me to be pushed by life coaches and the like with zero evidence that it actually does anything. I perceive it as a snake oil product.

The topic is huge and any attempt to summarize it like this is bound to fail. These are just a couple of thoughts.

Also, maybe the best condensation is Allan Watts "The reason why you want to be better is the reason why you aren't."

Edit: google the Allan Watts quote, it's a few minutes speech - you can listen or find it transcribed. Worth listening for another perspective on getting better.

<comment><USER8> What do I do if I'm not successful then? I've dealt with suicidal ideation before, but everyone then just told me that it was a problem of mindset.

If I'm not capable of becoming successful then...what's the point?

<comment><USER9> To reiterate what others here already said, success really isn't anything "universally great" to aim for. There's probably no real way to do that either, since there isn't even any universal definition of what success really means. This is especially true when everyone comes up with their own unique set of requirements for considering themselves successful. It is also way too easy to fall for the trap of moving the goalpost once you're there.

And if you felt like you hadn't reached your own definition of success, then what of it? Would that really, honestly change your life in any measurable way, or is the feeling of "not being enough" all in your head? If it is, then that also means your head holds the means to get rid of such a feeling.

I really want to recommend the book "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. It was one of the greatest assets for me overcoming my own depression, and I hope it can help you battle your suicidal thoughts all the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've found some shifts in my language have helped with this. Here's some examples from a blog post I wrote on this awhile ago:

Instead of "Some people are born to be singers—I'm not one of them." ▶ try "I didn't start with any singing talent—I've had to learn it all."

Instead of "I suck at math." ▶ try "Math has been challenging for me."

Instead of "I'll never be an artist." ▶ try "I feel really dissatisfied with all of the art I've tried to produce."

Instead of "I would never be comfortable offering hugs to strangers." ▶ try "I'm finding it really hard to imagine offering hugs to strangers."

Instead of "I never seem to be able to keep my notes organized." ▶ try "In the past, when I tried to keep my notes organized, I didn't have much success."

Instead of "I'd really like to learn to juggle, but I just can't." ▶ try "I'd really like to learn to juggle, though I haven't started yet."

Instead of "I'm not good at origami." ▶ try "I haven't learned how to do origami yet."

Instead of "I'm just bad at it, and I don't care." ▶ try "Well, it's not a priority for me to learn right now."

Here's the blog post, which features a few other kinds of reframes as well as some other examples: [http://malcolmocean.com/grow](http://malcolmocean.com/grow)

Can also help to get your friends in on it so they spot when you're using fixed-mindset language and point it out for you :)

<comment><USER11> Not exactly the same thing, but this reminds me of a style of speaking/writing that avoids using "to be" verbs. I don't remember the name and can't seem to find it on Wikipedia right now, but it's similar to what this article describes [1]. The crux of it is, you avoid framing things as more absolute and permanent than they really are. For example, you are not inherently bad at math, you are just bad at it in your current state you don't quickly solve problems people regard as "math". Or you are not inherently a bad person, you just did some specific things that hurt people.

[1]: [https://blog.penningtonpublishing.com/grammar_mechanics/how-...](https://blog.penningtonpublishing.com/grammar_mechanics/how- to-eliminate-to-be-verbs-in-writing/)

<comment><USER12> > Not exactly the same thing, but this reminds me of a style of > speaking/writing that avoids using "to be" verbs. I don't remember the name > and can't seem to find it on Wikipedia right now, but it's similar to what > this article describes

This is E Prime: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Practice being terrible.

I think a lot of us have some idea of what "practice" means, but very few of us do it. Instead, we "play to win". Because it feels like practice but it really isn't.

For example, a lot of folks want to get better at basketball, so they play pickup games. Which is great. But isn't enough to get really good. You're trying to win at that game. So you won't do the necessary things to learn new skills. And the necessary things is to look like an idiot while you try a new move, a fadeaway, dribbling with your weak hand, etc.

I think that applies to most of life. We sort of think we're trying to get better, but really we're in all these games to win.

So to get better at this, I think it's necessary to just shift to more things that look like real practice with no intent on outcome. Give yourself chores like: I'm going to write an article every week for 6 months in different styles that match authors I look up to. (Maybe you publish these, maybe you don't.)

There's no winning in that statement (except the part about showing up every day). Many of us are going to resist and try to turn the exercise into: I'm going to try and grow my blog subscribers by X over 6 months. No, that's a game about winning. Get back to just practice.

When we understand what practice really feels like, the growth mindset comes more naturally: Ah yes, I'm used to sucking at something but I show up and practice and see how I get better.

Another exercise: practice being terrible in public. Give yourself quotas show off how bad you are at the beginning. Like publish yourself learning something something. Twitch stream learning to code. Publish those first awful videos you edit. Every. Day.

<comment><USER14> Just to piggy back off basketball and practice, this video of Steph Curry practicing shooting 3s for an hour from a few months ago just puts things in perspective for me. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqIRDgNoKBU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqIRDgNoKBU)

A best ever at something doing the most simple drills for an hour.

I have in my head I suck at basketball but Curry takes more practice shots in that video than I have in my life.

<comment><USER15> Yeah that's mind blowing to me. Lots of people think these ultra successful people are just immensely talented but overlook the insane amount of work they put in. My new theory for success is around obsession. If you find something that you can be completely and utterly obsessed with, that's how you can ultimately cultivate enough skill at it to be successful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a great question that not everyone asks, especially honestly and genuinely! It can be a little bit uncomfortable to begin things. There's a Norwegian word for it, dørstokkmila, which means doorstep mile. The first mile out the door (like on a run on a cold day) is always the hardest. There are plenty of sayings about it to let us know that this feeling is actually a shared one: another one is "all beginnings are difficult". But this might not bring you consolation (hardy har, perfect example of where knowing it all can't save us: we need to know how to _do_ too, so here are a few more ideas: \- thinking about those (rare) nifty elderly people who are able to begin new things with grace and humour: it is exactly their grace and humour that brings them an air of authority even though they may 'look silly' being out of their league \- thinking about new things as an experiment, a little game you play with yourself to see how calm you can be in it \- making it even harder than it is by asking yourself questions, to prove to yourself that you are curious (after a few hours of this, going back to the 'normal mode' of learning something new will seem easier!) Let us hope we live long, rich lives. Playing games with ourselves to learn how to learn can make our lives more fun than stressful. Finally: \- it helps to develop a sense of humour! Good luck to us all on this journey :) And a great but serious book that might be inspiring is Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens. Keep on keeping on!

<comment><USER16> * sorry for the typos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've never really looked into this "growth mindset" fad, but based on what I'm seeing here, I probably have it.

What is my secret?

I look up "how to" on the subject and learn about it until I'm comfortable with the amount of risk involved in trying it.

That means that if I want to tile my bathroom floor, I watch Youtube videos on tiling and find out how much the materials will cost and what it would cost to fix my mistake if it's so bad that I can't fix it myself.

The result of that was my first attempt at floor tiling going very, very well, but with a _lot_ of hard work that probably could have been easier if I'd known more. But everyone says the tile looks amazing. I see the flaws, but they don't until I point them out.

The same goes with programming at work. I've almost never said "no", but I've often said, "I'll have to look into that" and it often results in creating a proof of concept for the hardest part before actually attempting the whole project. I usually end up doing it, and it almost always works out.

So my "growth mindset" is simply to look up tutorials before saying "no".

</comment><comment><USER18> Well there is no real secret to learning stuff. Other than a few very extraordinary disciplines, anything can be learned if you put in the time and keep at it regularly. Of course, this statement is only valid if you apply the proper learning techniques, but also these can be learned.

It is hard to give you general advice since everybody is at a different mindset and has different learning techniques. What helped me was realizing that whenever I hit a wall, I would stop trying because it felt annoying, difficult, or I didn't really know what to do.

The secret for me was to do everything I can, meticulously and methodically, to break through the perceived barrier in my understanding of something in very small steps. And keep going until I felt the curtain was lifting.

Now, it is just a matter of how long it will take.

<comment><USER19> Maybe there are a few secrets to learning stuff. Has anybody taken the "Learning how to Learn" coursera course? [https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to- learn?ranMID=...](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to- learn?ranMID=40328&ranEAID=EHFxW6yx8Uo&ranSiteID=EHFxW6yx8Uo-7HxMWeN0cC3tmLxTCjTVUw&siteID=EHFxW6yx8Uo-7HxMWeN0cC3tmLxTCjTVUw&utm_content=10&utm_medium=partners&utm_source=linkshare&utm_campaign=EHFxW6yx8Uo)

<comment><USER20> I've taken the course, and highly recommend it to everyone! I wish I had taken it years sooner, as most of the techniques can be applied to any learning endeavor.

The instructors do touch on having a "growth mindset", as well as teaching practical skills that are easy and effective both for retaining what you learn and for fighting procrastination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Your question suggests you already started developing it.

I don't have any sources to give but my tought process: I belive I can learn and do anything if I meet some base prerequisites and put in time. Based on my experience you roughly need 10 years continous development to master something.

To get started in harder level math you need to understand some elementary level basics about numbers and how draw numbers on paper. I struggled a lot with math in uni and it remained a struggle for every year. But when I finished I was a fuckin math genious compared to those who just started CS.

Can I speak? Okay, now I can do public speakings. Will it be enjoyable to listen? Nah. But if you try to be better for 1 year and learn the basics you will already be better than anyone around you.

Another example is playing the piano. Can I press the white and black buttons on it? Do I have sense of rythm? Okay, then I can play the piano! Now do my current skills able to entertain? Only as a bad joke. But if I enjoy doing it and practice and try to be better for 10 continous years I will be someone who can sit down in a bar and play enjoyable jazz all night. I won't be another Strauss thats for sure - but talent is not required to do most things well. It only speeds up the process and makes the peak higher.

Doing things well requires only two thing - to start doing it and time.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right." ― Henry Ford

"There is nothing impossible to him who will try." ― Alexander the Great

I know, these sound like platitudes but in my experience they are mostly accurate.

I listen to this speech by Arnold Schwarzenegger when I find myself thinking I can't: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQxqIKTO2Ck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQxqIKTO2Ck)

</comment><comment><USER23> I might recommend paradoxically focusing on work less. Pick up hobbies, focus on your relationships, etc.

Why?

When we really make work the center of our lives, it becomes high stakes, and it feels hard to take risks. When it becomes just part of our lives, it can be a focus for lower risk 'play' and experimentation. Then we feel more comfortable trying things we would normally not try.

</comment><comment><USER24> People get tied up with people problems, the great big universe doesn't give a sh*t about people problems - galaxies and suns will spin around no matter what you do. We have millions of years of evolution coded in our every actions - eating, sleeping, waking, screwing - how do you escape this? To me that is how you get a growth mindset, though even that feels a poor name.

A better thing to my mind is escape your programming, learn all there is to know about disparate fields, don't get tied down in other peoples dilemmas, dream incredibly big, find others who want to do the same, people will come and go in your life, enjoy them, shun people who want to drag you down. Every day do wonderful things, even if you have to do every day things, you'll still have time to find a tiny bit of wonderful somewhere, eventually it will grow. Learn a lot about humanities and science, not because you have to but because you want to know.

We have so many reactions that are hard and soft coded into our thoughts and bodies, from our DNA, our upbringing, our schooling, society, work - <USER2> them, when you react to something, figure out why, and if necessary deprogram yourself. You will start to see the universe outside the people sphere, and you can bring some of it back, and share it, and make the people world a better place perhaps, and have your growth mindset.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's probably not universal for all people but I can tell you what changed things for me: what I'd call a "critical mass of unfortunate events". At one point in my life(early 20's) I ended up alone, far from my parents, lost my closest friend, the economic crisis was at it's peak, close relatives stabbed me in the back multiple times and overall I was left to deal with life on my own.

So in that aspect - it was necessity over anything else. I guess it pushed me into a slightly stoicistic way of thinking about life in general. Two books (which contradict each other a lot) helped me to tweak my thinking by finding a path somewhere between them: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. I find myself re-reading them once a year as a matter of fact. Finding the sweet spot between them is what made me go forward - on one hand don't stress too much about the outcome and simply try to do the best to your abilities and on the other look for the collective gains from every idea/aim(product). With the appropriate amount of dedication, it's worked for me even with the largest challenges(of which I've had a lot in recent years as well). Not as I would have hoped but better than the alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think I've always had more of a growth mindset, thanks to my parents instilling a "whatever anyone else can do, you can do" attitude in me from a very young age.

Sometimes that belief has turned out to be unfounded, when I've attempted things that were well beyond my capabilities, leading to some painful failures.

Still, none of them have killed me or ruined me, so I still think I'm better for the experience.

After some big failures about 8 years ago I discovered the concept of subconscious emotional healing work, and I have practiced various forms of this work ever since. Some of it has been under the guidance of professional practitioners, and sometimes I've just done it by myself or with friends or my partner.

That work has helped me to overcome a lot of emotional barriers that had held me back from getting better at valuable skills like programming, public speaking, emotional intelligence/empathy, financial management, etc.

I'm not a standout success, but my career and life has steadily improved since I started that emotional work, and has had some major lifts after working through some significant emotional obstacles, so I'm very sure it's been effective.

So my tip would be to search around for books and/or practitioners on subconscious emotional healing/growth work. There are many different forms of it, but try whatever you find and go with what feels right and delivers results.

By the way, it sounds like you already have a growth mindset, in that you already believe you can grow, you're just looking for systems to help you achieve that growth.

</comment><comment><USER27> For me, often the problem is just one of perception. When something seems impossible or out of reach, I think about how my own accomplishments can seem out of reach to some industry outsiders.

For example, installing a router and setting up a wifi network can seem like an unfathomably complex topic to an older person who's lived their life mostly via paperwork. But it's not that hard! And that person could almost definitely sort out how to do it with a little time and effort. You probably have examples of this in your own life.

So then, just flip it. That challenging thing that seems out of reach? Just assume you're the older person setting up wifi - assuming the thing is much more complicated and difficult than it actually is. It only seems so daunting because you have no exposure to that specific topic. If you just rip the bandaid and start learning about it a bit, you'll almost always discover that the individual steps to get started (for almost anything) are completely within reach.

For me, that thought process always gives me enough confidence to _try_. If I find out the thing is actually too hard, so be it. But usually, it isn't. Usually it's surprisingly easy!

</comment><comment><USER28> So what is fixed vs growth mindset?

You believe in innate talent _vs_ you believe in practice and hardwork.

Failure indicates that you don't have it _vs_ curiosity around why it did not work this time.

Criticism or feedback is taken personally _vs_ Feedback is a way to learn.

You are constantly looking at others to validate your talent _vs_ You are measuring and developing your own yardsticks for growth.

As per my understanding, you can have growth mindset in one sphere of your life and have fixed mindset in another. For e.g. a person I recently met, has fixed mindset around programming, but has a growth mindset on the subject of maths.

What does all this result in? Our self-talk about the activity at hand will tell us what mindset we have.

Do we tell ourselves: "I am not good enough", "I will never be good at this". Are we constantly looking at others to gauge what they perceive of us or our abilities?

We then need to transform all these into

1\. "I am not good at this right now, but if I work at it, I will".

2\. "Everyone struggles. It's just not me. Everyone has spent time and effort to become good at it." "Everyone finds learning a new thing hard and challenging"

3\. What is stopping me from continuing right now? "Am i tired?", "Am I hungry?" or is it my regular pattern of avoiding pain of learning? Can I transform this towards curiosity?

To move towards growth mindset we need to approach it with a sense of play. With a sense of curiosity towards what we are trying to learn or develop into. We also need to be aware of how are feelings are involved and what they are pushing us to do or avoid.

</comment><comment><USER29> I just read a really good book about this: The Inner Game of Tennis. The book is old and never mentions the phrase "growth mindset," but it goes into great detail about how often the judging mind gets in the way of the subconscious mind when learning new skills.

I read the book primarily to help with meditation skills, and it gave me a lot of new perspective during my sits.

</comment><comment><USER30> For me, I find that I have to create the conditions for it and it'll naturally come along.

Taking the quarantine for example, I initially thought I would have an infinite amount of time to read new subjects and practice on topics I haven't for awhile, but I quickly found myself spending most of my time on video games. After adjusting my schedule of daily workouts, cooking, sleeping, and everything else I thought was mundane, my motivation to start reading one esoteric security topics and browse new open source projects came back up. Like what other posters are saying, you have to take care of the rest of your life first, both physically and emotionally, and then you'll naturally be creative and daring.

</comment><comment><USER31> Growth Mindset is a cognitive technique. Many techniques that fall under the umbrealla of congnitive and behaviorial technique is rife with overhyping, overgeneralized claims and false promises. Here is an article about the growth mindset controversy: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debate- arises-ove...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debate-arises-over- teaching-growth-mindsets-to-motivate-students/). Life and success is hard. Be careful when someone tries to sell you some easy techniques to be successful in life.

</comment><comment><USER32> For any given skill, there's a huge difference between being able to _attempt_ it, which most people can do, and _mastering_ it, which requires a large commitment of effort. Though most people can master most skills, the high cost means there's a reasonably hard limit on the total number of skills anyone can truly learn.

That said, it's important to give yourself permission to do things you know you'll be bad at, at least when the stakes are low: The biggest impediment most people have to learning is a fear of failure, which is almost inevitable when attempting something new.

</comment><comment><USER33> Some notes in my personal diary that may help. In this case a framework/strategy to "advance" my career.

Below are the criteria.

\- Desire "The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat." - Napoleon Hill

\- Remove self limiting beliefs. Great comment on this very thread[0]

\- Never be satisfic with what you have. Keep lifing the bar for your self. Do harder things once the current ones your doing are easy. For instance, I plan on moving from web development & start doing some cryptoraphy.

\- Trust your instincts Kowledege kills action its the #1 source of excuses. Stop asking, you already know what todo.

\- Choosing a goal Choose a bold goal, contruct daily routines that will move you to this goal. Goals should also be focused & Intinsically rewarding. i.e Work on what excites you, not is whats on demand. An example is me that has accumlated a not-so popular set of programming skills (Nim, Flutter, Solidity & Scilla). I believe Paul Graham has an a related essay on this[1]

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23614989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23614989) [1]: [http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> Many people have already said, more-or-less, "embrace the suck". Learning new things will always have an initial period of less-than-ideal results. So I won't repeat that.

Let me add: Break down the trouble spots into simpler sub-skills. I learned this being a "Suzuki-dad" \-- coaching my child through Suzuki-method violin. When you give a 3-year-old a fiddle, don't expect Mozart after a couple days. The method works by breaking each skill down to the components, and working on each component as a manageable piece, in the order in which they build on each other.

So, if you are trying to learn something, and it isn't going well, analyze the skill that is eluding you, and break it down to constituent components. If that doesn't work, break it down further into even simpler components.

My kid eventually achieved exquisite Mozart, and Bach and De Beriot and Sarasate and Bartok. But even at that level, learning requires taking the troublesome measure, and breaking it down, and constructing little drills that reinforce the skills needed for that measure.

In my own life, I have on the breakfast table a rather sucky pepper mill that I turned out of a nice piece of cherry. I want to make a better pepper mill that doesn't suck, right after I turn a pen that will probably suck. So I am reading up on how to sharpen chisels... and watching YouTube on "how to use a skew chisel" (For context, of all the turning chisels, the skew is the one most likely to catch and scare you senseless. Which happened the one-and-only time I tried to turn a bead with a skew chisel.)

</comment><comment><USER35> When I first read about Dweck's work on mindset, I thought I had finally found the perfect description of my struggles in childhood. I was like a textbook case of fixed mindset.

But after a while I realized that the abstraction of "mindset" isn't actually much help in changing your behavior. It's more like mindset is a label you apply to a set of behaviors after the fact rather than some principle that drives the behavior in the first place. In other words, if you want to have a "growth mindset" then you behave in a way that people with such a mindset behave. That is obviously completely useless advice—so what you're really digging for is what drives the behavior that Dweck calls fixed mindset.

For me, those behaviors are driven by fear. I suspect that I have a heightened physiological fear response compared to the average person, and fixed mindset behavior is just how I coped with that as a child. There's really only a handful of ways to deal with that, the most effective of which is basically exposure therapy: engage in low-stakes activities that make you afraid, as often as possible. Frequently taking up new hobbies with a social element is a pretty easy way to accomplish this.

</comment><comment><USER36> Divide and conquer. Practise and learn. You need to do deliberate practise to become better. You can learn to play an instrument but you need to practise with a teacher todo it or learning platform for that matter.

Pick up a new skill do deliberate practice and you will become better at it.

And if you for some reason say you cannot do it it's a mental block stop doing that. Start and try.

</comment><comment><USER37> First of all, don't grow for growth's sake.

Figure out what makes you happy. When you're 100 years old, what will you have done, learned, or experienced that will make it worthwhile? As if it were one big experience that you unknowingly opted into. It can be many things, but usually there are a few really important things in there. It may take some real consideration - think about it for a while.

Thats your vision. And once you have your vision, growth may be necessary to achieve that vision. The existence of a vision will point you in the right direction of growth.

With that approach you may find that certain interests you have now fade away when you take such a broad perspective. It also forces you to take an inherently personal perspective on life. After all, it's what you want to make of it that is important, not what somebody else (religious leader, life coach, buddha, tech guru) says.

</comment><comment><USER38> I find people like to challenge me to do things I have no interest in doing. Sure, based on what they know about me and my abilities it may seem like a reasonable thing for me to learn. But, maybe after looking into it I can evaluate the cost (time/money) and decide "Nope, don't wanna." It's not that I couldn't. I'm finance guy. My whole career "you need an MBA, you need a CPA" or on the technical side, you need to learn "tableau or flavor of the day". Sure, it would be cool and boost my resume. But, honestly, my trajectory has yet to slow down by not having MBA or CPA. I went to biz school the first time for my undergrad. I literally had some courses where MBA students were in the same class but got different homework. All my jobs come from a network I've built. I have built a reputation and view MBA is a signal on a resume when your resume is one in the stack of resumes. I know a lot about accounting but CPA is for accountants, I work closely with accountants and can partner with them when some something unusual comes up. Tools like Tableau, I learn them when I have a use for them. I've personally never seen a use for it (I see how others could use it given another industry/business datasets/etc). I've looked at it, I know the business data my company has, and I don't have to learn the tool to know it's just going to be a shiny toy instead of impactful for business decisions. All that said, I've climbed the corp ladder from entry level analyst, manager, director, CFO in about 10 years - so again, should I have wasted 2 years on an MBA, another 1-2 years on CPA, nights and weekends on learning technology without application? Often, managers "have to say something" to push you to grow. You should be critical in deciding whether it's the best use of your time.

That's my personal story, but to address the OP question directly; change your response and turn it into a conversation. If you say "I can't/won't be able" that pretty much ends the conversation. "where can I find resources to learn X?" "I don't have a ton of time, do you know of a crash course to get started on X?" "I prefer lectures, I'll see if I can find a course on X." 1) they may know of great resources 2) conversational so you aren't just shooting down their constructive feedback 3) very easy for people to tell you what to learn, more work to tell you how to learn it successfully. If they can't tell you how to learn it, they can't blame you for "failing"

</comment><comment><USER39> There are lots of good techniques here related to growth mindset and being ok being bad at something, etc. But I hear in this question something else- I hear an interactive, real time challenge, how to respond in real time to someone who gives you something scary.

That isn't a growth mindset problem, not really. It's a performance challenge. The domain that IMO has the best guidance is acting, specifically Improvisation- Improv for short.

There are many practices and techniques here for recognizing the fear and learning to ride it. "Yes, and" is one that was revelatory for me.

I highly recommend a book called Impro, by Keith Johnstone. And look for introductory Improv classes in your area (remote, of course). They are super fun, initially terrifying, but tremendously valuable. Should be a standard curricular class in all middle and high schools.

Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER40> You are your environment. Whether that's the content you consume, the food you eat, or the people you are surrounded by. Be mindful of the all.

That said, don't over-think / over-focus. Be sure to devote some time to experimenting / R&D.

A growth mindset is not a goal, it's an iterative process.

</comment><comment><USER41> Start by doing the task you want to do every day for a set period of time, say 30 mins up to 1.5 hrs. Then you will see the product of your hard work and you will internalise the fact that success is more a product of hard work rather than just being magically good at something.

</comment><comment><USER42> Remember how you learned to ride a bike or to swim as a kid. You couldn't avoid the practice because the thing you wanted (have fun with other kids swimming and biking) could only be obtained by this practice.

E.g. you can learn languages or whatever you want actually the same way, but might have to engineer your environment a bit to create a similar anti cheat system like with the kid example above.

You can constrain your environment in a way so that those constraints push in you towards your destination. Think of it like filters or hurdles, where another thing you want (like advancing another hobby) can only be obtained through those filters. It's like jumping into ice cold water, it's brutal at first, but you get used to it.

</comment><comment><USER43> I did not read all the comments and hence do not know if this has been already mentioned. I have found "The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin, as an excellent guide to two approaches of thinking: fixed mindset and growth mindset.

The author was a national chess champion at the age of nine and later earns the title of world champion of Tai Chi, a martial art. He gives a critical analysis, especially in chapter three on how he was able to shift to growth mindset. Although most of it is very specific to him and written in chess lingo, I think the common theme is graspable and there are good ideas lying all around. Style on chessboard is direct expression of personality and this book may help you.

</comment><comment><USER44> I look at it as an equation between your conscious and unconscious

quite often things that require change end up equaling 0, where your motivation to do it = the resistance to stay the same, stay safe, stay comfortable.

so you need to add something to the equation that's external and outside of your control, that tips the odds.

we have all these big brain solutions to jimmy our unconscious into doing things we want, but we often don't realize our unconscious has the same ability to jimmy our conscious mind to create balance

</comment><comment><USER45> Accept that it's very possible you _can't_ do X or Y.

Are X and Y reasonable? Are they things you even _want_ to do? Or things that you feel like you _have_ to do because of some hacker-start-up-culture-HN- bullshit? Why even care when someone challenges you?

Everybody's different and some people (like me) aren't capable of a lot. Once I accepted that, life became a lot easier. I read, watch TV, exercise, do decently at work, but am I really doing anything? Not really. But I'm OK with that.

</comment><comment><USER46> Learn something. Doesn't matter what. Just pick at and get really damn good at it. Or even, just a little bit better than you were yesterday, every day for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER47> I guess when you can wrangle an opportunity, act and don't let it slip. some people never get opportunity. But more often people let their morals, their conscience, the law, social expectations, their image, fear et cetera get in the way. We're all vulnerable to it to some extent and that's okay. But you should at least realize you are paying a price when you let a thing like that hold you back.

</comment><comment><USER48> Read this [http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dweck](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dweck)

</comment><comment><USER49> I just remember this quote: "Sucking at something is the first step to being good at something".

You might not be able to do that new thing right now, but if you try, suck at it and keep trying, eventually you will be able to do it to some degree of proficiency. I haven't found much of anything in life that you can't get better at by trying again and again.

<comment><USER50> >> I haven't found much of anything in life that you can't get better at by trying again and again.

I used to think the same way until I tried learning to play guitar. Have been trying it for a year now and I seriously question if I will ever be able to do it with reasonable proficiency. (So far holding on though.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> "It's really important to just take what life has given you, and do your best with it. I'm not going to say that anyone can do anything, those are just empty words, but I will say that your limits are way further out than you think they are. And if you push yourself you'll be really pleased with the results."

\- speedrunner halfcoordinated, SGDQ 2016

</comment><comment><USER52> I've heard the theory called racquetball with a tennis racket. When trying new things accept that you will get some big things wrong. But you'll probably also get some things right and still have fun.

If you like it you'll have time and motivation to pick up the details later.

(To a non growth mindset a worry like using the wrong racquet for a sport is paralyzing.)

</comment><comment><USER53> Growth mindset is there is always enough.

Scarcity is there is never enough.

Both is a mind-set.

So to change, you need to change your mindset.

The best way to do that, has for me been through the Arbinger mindset change tools, start with their books, i can recommend "The outward mindset" and take it from there.

</comment><comment><USER54> Bite off more than you can chew. Then chew it. ;)

For software development, I know what I can't do and try to go a bit deeper into that space every time, but not too deep.

For things I have no idea about, I get a mentor.

</comment><comment><USER55> i have convinced myself that anything i want to do, i should try at least 3 times. in the beginning, i even set my expectations for failing the first 2. helped me tremendously.

</comment><comment><USER56> Tom Bilyeu said something in a video (don't remember the video): "On a long enough timeline, I can learn this". I've found it to be pretty helpful.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm not sure when I did it, but at some point I managed to adopt the idea that "everything is learnable" as a core belief. It's really valuable.

A few examples:

I took up a management role. Management is hard! It's a whole new package of challenges that have little to do with being a great software engineer. The difference between humans and computers is that humans don't automatically tell you the exact truth, and don't do exactly what you ask them to do.

But... it's learnable. Books like The Managers Path. Courses. Coaching. Thinking hard about what makes good management. Talking to peers.

Very good manager started as a barely-adequate manager. Talking to other managers about their journeys to actually being good at it was really useful.

I've tried and failed to learn languages before. I'd let myself believe that if you're older then twenty you have a big disadvantage in language learning.

Then my dad learned a new language in his sixties and I realized my excuses were rubbish. So I started a Duolingo streak to learn Spanish. And 578 days later I'm still going. I have a weekly Spanish lesson with a teacher now. I recently switched my phone to Spanish to more fully immerse myself.

I'm no-where near a fluent Spanish speaker but I can feel myself getting a little bit better every day.

Languages are fantastic for helping you get better at learning, because there's no magic shortcut: it doesn't matter how smart or quick you are at learning, it's going to take you a LOT of work to master a language. Its humbling. And yet almost everyone does it once and hundreds of millions of people have learned multiple languages.

I just finished a year at Stanford on a fellowship program. I very deliberately took classes that were WAY out of my comfort level: things like classical guitar, improv, and screenwriting.

Watching fresh faced undergrads (I am not a fresh faced undergrad) go from incompetent at something to actually pretty good in just a few weeks - <USER3> watching myself do the same - was a healthy reminder that everything is learnable if you put the effort in. And often that effort is ten weeks of intense exposure, showing up and putting in the work.

I also realized that in many skilled professions the entry-level workers have only had 2-3 years of training and experience in order to get good enough to be paid to do their thing. And a lifetime has many multiples of 2-3 years in it.

I don't need to be an expert at everything - but racking up a few disciplines in which I'm as good as an entry-level professional over the course of a lifetime now seems achievable and worth considering.

</comment><comment><USER58> People, myself included, can often focus too much on the planning / organisational type of things rather than just getting things done, I.e. Just do it TM. You can end up procrastinating by reading up on stuff meant to help you stop procrastinating.

</comment><comment><USER59> Try. Fail. Learn. Try again.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it legal for a company to restrict an internship to certain races? - <AUTHOR> I'm a person of color working for a large tech company in San Francisco. I was disgusted to find out that we have a paid internship program that is explicitly only limited to people of certain races.
1) Description on website: "...is a paid 12-week summer internship program designed for second-year students interested in gaining hands-on and real-life experience in the tech industry."
"Eligibility: Full-time student identifying as black, Latinx, and/or Native American completing your undergraduate study in 2021 at a university or college."
2) Is this legal? I am familiar with affirmative action, but all examples I have seen describe it as stuff like: "language on job advertisements urging minorities to apply, or a policy that favors African-Americans when all other qualifications among job applicants are equal.". I've never seen a company explicitly say that only certain races are eligible. If someone can point me to some credible sources discussing this specific issue, it would be great.
3) Assuming this is not legal, how do I get them to stop? Based on what I know about the company, this is not the work of an unsupervised employee, but something that was likely approved by upper management. The company has an ethics hotline that guarantees confidentiality and non-retaliation, but I've seen the company break confidentiality and retaliate when they were promised in the past.
I can't file an EEOC complaint because I wasn't discriminated against. The application deadline just ended and they are now interviewing candidates.
I'm afraid that if this ends up being controversial, instead of stopping racial discrimination, they will just hide it better by not putting up an explicit notice. People working here seem morally fine with this sort of discrimination. They don't seem to notice the hypocrisy of saying in huge letters "[Company Name] is where inclusion lives" and then linking to a page that excludes people from a job on the basis of race. <comment><USER2> > for a large tech company in San Francisco

The company is easily identifiable just by searching for the text you quoted, so you're not really hiding which company you're working for (if that's your intention).

As to whether this kind of discrimination is legal: I'd assume a company that size has a huge legal department, and any corporate program they run has been vetted by their lawyers. So there's probably some loophole in the law that makes it legal.

By the way, offering the internship only to second-year students would be age discrimination (it effectively excludes almost everyone older than 40, who are a protected class under federal law), and offering it only to full-time college students would be discriminating against people who can't afford to attend college full-time (e.g., because they have families they need to support).

<comment><USER3> > offering the internship only to second-year students would be age > discrimination

This is not true.

> offering it only to full-time college students would be discriminating > against people who can't afford to attend college full-time

This is also not true.

<comment><AUTHOR> IANAL, but it is only illegal to discriminate against protected classes. It is legal to discriminate against people without college degrees or aren't attending college, just as it is legal to discriminate against smokers, or people who can't code.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group)

<comment><USER4> > IANAL, but it is only illegal to discriminate against protected classes.

Age over 40 is a protected class, and anti-discrimination law protects not only against facially or intentionally discriminatory acts, but also against those with a disparate impact not sufficiently justified by business concerns (though the standard for that is weaker for age discrimination than other workplace discrimination.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I can't file an EEOC complaint because I wasn't discriminated against.

That's not quite true. I'd talk to a California employment law attorney, or a public interest law firm that might be interested in these facts.

> People working here seem morally fine with this sort of discrimination.

This is the bigger problem, but the nondiscrimination laws were passed precisely because some people felt morally fine with race discrimination.

<comment><USER6> To add to that, California's Unruh Civil Rights Act is broader than the US federal law, and the federal laws related to the EEOC don't require that complainant be the one that was discriminated against.

The laws against retaliation hold so long as you have a "reasonable good faith belief" that there may be a violation of the laws, and the court has a generous interpretation of that phrase. I'll quote from [https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/litigation/briefs/jordan2.txt](https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/litigation/briefs/jordan2.txt) :

> ... an employee should be deemed protected from retaliation by §704(a) when > he reports conduct by a coworker or supervisor which, if repeated often > enough, would create a hostile work environment. Several courts have held > such complaints protected, often by applying a generous standard in > determining whether the plaintiff's belief was reasonable. See, e.g., > Alexander, 40 F.3d at 195-96 (summarized supra at p. 11); Reed, 95 F.3d at > 1174-80 (summarized supra at p. 11); Moyo v. Gomez, 40 F.3d 982, 985 (9th > Cir. 1994) (black corrections officer believed prison's practice of allowing > white inmates, but not black inmates, to shower after work shifts violated > Title VII; he complained and was fired; court held that even if these > inmates would not be considered employees for Title VII purposes, > plaintiff's belief might still have been reasonable, and the district court > accordingly erred in dismissing his claim); id. at 984 ("An erroneous belief > that an employer engaged in an unlawful employment practice is reasonable, > and thus actionable under § 704(a), if premised on a mistake made in good > faith. A good-faith mistake may be one of fact or of law.") (emphasis in > original); ... ("[P]laintiffs alleging retaliation are not required to > possess a good faith, reasonable belief as to every legal element necessary > to succeed on such a claim, and are instead held only to a 'lay person's' > understanding of the violation . . . . It is the Court's firm conviction > that . . . the law should not leave unprotected those employees who > experience retaliation for reports of what they believe reasonably and in > good faith to be a violation of the law . . . .").

You can see that the corrections officer was protected from retaliation even though he himself was not the one being discriminated against.

But really, take Digory's advice and talk to someone with specific CA experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am not a lawyer, take with a grain of salt.

You can discriminate all you want, even as an employer. You just can't do so against protected classes.

They are not discriminating against a protected class, they are discriminating against a non-protected class. Now, if they refused a candidate because of their sexual orientation or other protected class, then they would be violating the law

</comment><comment><USER8> Company is Twitter</comment>


Fecal transplants in a capsule may be as effective as colonoscopy - <AUTHOR> https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/fecal-transplants-in-a-capsule-may-be-as-effective-as-those-delivered-by-colonoscopy-study-1.3697446 <comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately the trial wasn't blinded. The only previously blinded trial into FMT for C.diff wasn't very successful:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15773022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15773022)

(even the placebo group had up to 90% remission, with no difference between placebo and active treatment for one of the trial locations).</comment>


Qt 5.7 released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.qt.io/blog/2016/06/16/qt-5-7-released/ <comment><USER2> "This means that all the parts of Qt for Application Development that previously have been available only to commercial users are now available in the Open Source package as well."

omg YES! finally! I was waiting for years to use QtCharts!

<comment><USER3> Just curious - have you ever tried qcustomplot?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anybody have experience with other cross platform GUI toolkits that are still actively developed? It's starting to feel like Qt is going to win it all because they are enduring (and excellent).

<comment><USER5> libui [1] is a promising new cross platform GUI toolkit. If I need a GUI for a small cross platform desktop app, I will definitely try it.

It uses MIT license, which means there is less headache for commercial applications. It is also more lightweight. I have always felt that Qt has a lot of unnecessary classes. libui has C api, but it would be easy to write a nice c++11 wrapper around it.

[1] [https://github.com/andlabs/libui](https://github.com/andlabs/libui)

<comment><USER6> libui is a very interesting project but I find it still pretty much alpha: good enough for playing around with it, but not quite ready for production. However it is moving fast, so who knows its state in a few months.. Btw, I'm slowly building a python wrapper (1) and accepting contributions!

(1) - [https://github.com/joaoventura/pylibui](https://github.com/joaoventura/pylibui)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> With LGPLv3, the Qt company is sending a clear signal it's time to pay if you want to use Qt in a device (the industry being clearly anti-(L)GPLv3). It could be the chance for GTK, if they weren't also busy digging their own grave :-/ [http://lwn.net/Articles/691131](http://lwn.net/Articles/691131)

<comment><USER8> If you're fine with dynamic linking, then commercial development is still very much possible (though you lose Qt Charts).

The only major pain is that you have to supply a copy of the Qt Source if requested - the pain being that a link to the official repo is not enough, you have to be in control of the code. However, I would imagine if you gave someone the option of (a) downloading from the website or (b) paying postage and handling for a disc with the same thing, that would satisfy the license.

<comment><USER9> > you have to supply a copy of the Qt Source if requested - the pain being > that a link to the official repo is not enough

I don't think this this is true. My googling is now failing me as I just get results about linking of libraries, but I remember reading it's enough to point to the source if it's unmodified in your application.

<comment><USER8> [http://www.qt.io/FAQ/#_Toc453700716](http://www.qt.io/FAQ/#_Toc453700716)

The Qt FAQ specifically says that their copy isn't sufficient, but as you say perhaps it only counts if you've made modifications (which would make sense).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> JIT support for WinRT, and 64bit ARM platforms in Qt QML, leading to much better QML performance on these platforms

+1 for qml perfromance

<comment><USER11> JIT for declarative markup? Has that even been done before?

<comment><USER12> QML has always had it, as far as I know. It makes for a little pause when loading an application as the logic is compiled. I'm not sure what other markup languages have done this, though.

They do have a Qt Quick compiler though which removes the need to JIT the user interface; maybe next release it'll see the light of day on the open-source side of things.

<comment><USER9> As far as I understand it's a bit different trade-off: pre-compiled code with no JIT means faster startup, but a bit reduced performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I want to like Qt but I hate that it needs moc. Also I don't like that it doesn't use much of the STL - it forces you to use classes like "QVector" and "QList" instead of std::vector and std::list.

<comment><USER14> I avoided Qt for a long time due to what I'd heard about moc being required. However recent versions support connecting lambdas to slots which is sufficient for my relatively simple application to avoid using moc to set up signals/slots.

<comment><USER13> Do you have a link that shows how to compile a Qt app without moc? I looked specifically for this and could only find this, which is unofficial and contains a bunch of ugly macros: [https://woboq.com/blog/verdigris-qt-without- moc.html](https://woboq.com/blog/verdigris-qt-without-moc.html)

<comment><USER15> Just don't use slots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ive been using QtQuick for a while now and the last two weeks i've battled with 5.7RC. So, time to dl the proper release and see if it works any better.

My conclusions are that it's fantastic for desktop apps, but I'm having a lot less success with mobile, specifically Android.

Originally, my plan was to reserve QT for desktop and write the mobile versions separately, whilst sharing the same C++ backend. However, i got tempted to try cross compiling my desktop version for Android.

After a massive battle, it works - a bit. But there's enough that doesn't work that prevents me from making a release just yet (cut & paste is missing!). Looks like I'll have to fill in the blanks myself.

Then Android is always a pig. I'm chewing over whether to recompile QT from source and start hacking it about for Android. This is what Ive had to do with pretty much all the cross platform systems. Android support is always poor and buggy.

On LGPL, I'm fine with it. If you want my QML source code, sure. But for now, I'll keep the backend DLL/.so closed (although I'd like to open that too, when ready). If you want to be able to change the front end and rebuild, I'm ok with that too. in fact, I'll happily document the backend interface for you.

Can we have more Controls.2 QML examples please (most are recycled v1 examples). QtQuick lacks in the tutorial department, although the online docs are good, once you know what you're looking for.

qmake is great, but qtcreator sucks, sorry. Qt widgets is obsolete, QtQuick is the way, once you get over QML.

<comment><USER17> I agree that Qt widgets is obsolete with the market -- they're not keeping up with the latest developments in interfaces and should just abandon this.

My question to you is why bother with QtQuick when you can build your interface in Webkit/HTML/CSS/jQuery? With the Webkit angle, then you can integrate file:// and remote content, and can utilize the best interfaces that the web has to offer, which is innovating far faster than QtQuick could ever dream of innovating because there are more web UI coders than there are QtQuick coders. The other great thing with the Webkit approach is that you can hire lower-cost UI coders (who have no background in C++) to do your interface, and debug it using Chrome. The interface would show up in the upper left-hand corner of the browser. They could stub it all out with fake data and get it working completely, and then pass it to you to do the jQuery connectivity to the Qt/C++ DOM injection so that jQuery could call C++ and get results.

However, if installer size is a concern, then yes, QtQuick is the way to go.

<comment><USER16> Good question. maybe i don't know the answer. I've been impressed by the way that QML and C++ integrate. I write bits of UI glue JS in QML and these bits call into C++ "magically". I can pass data in and get data back.

This is a lot easier than my JNI battles with Android Java.

I tend to have a lot of backend C++, which performs all the heavy lifting of my apps. I like to make the front UI as thin as possible. QML lets me build things quite fast and i like the way that properties update themselves.

The only real complaint i have with QtQuick/QML is things not working properly on Android. But I'm hoping this situation will improve, and the main reason I'm looking into Controls.2

You say that jquery can call to C++. Where can i find out about this and how would this work on Android.

<comment><USER17> > You say that jquery can call to C++. Where can I find out about this and how > would this work on Android?

If you use Qt 4.8, which required that you use Qt Webkit, then you're looking at needing to use the QtWebkit Bridge: [http://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/qtwebkit- bridge.html](http://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/qtwebkit-bridge.html)

If you're using Qt 5.7, which also requires that you use Qt WebEngine, then you're looking at needing to use QWebChannel: [http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qwebchannel.html](http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qwebchannel.html)

They allow you to take a QObject class and then share it with the Webkit DOM as a Javascript object. You can then use Javascript and jQuery to call class methods (only ones you expose) of your Qt/C++ QObject class.

BTW, outside of Qt/C++, on the Mac with Objective C, they provide a way to map the AppDelegate to the Webkit DOM using the windowScriptObject, and ObjC lets you use the native Webkit SDK, rather than having to ship another one with your project.

This is great for desktop applications. Unfortunately for iOS and Android, however, both Qt 4.8's Qt Webkit and Qt 5.7's Qt WebEngine are not supported on those mobile platforms. [http://stackoverflow.com/a/30662323/105539](http://stackoverflow.com/a/30662323/105539) I guess on those, you're stuck with using QtQuick/QML interacting with jQuery and C++, I guess? EDIT: On Android and iOS, you can use Qt WebView within a QML application, which uses the native Webkit on each OS. [http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebview-index.html](http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebview- index.html)

If I were to develop for iOS and Android, I'd probably use Apache Cordova until something better comes along: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Cordova#Supported_platf...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Cordova#Supported_platforms) . One criticism is that Cordova may be slow in some actions, but phones are getting much faster in every release, negating this trouble.

<comment><USER16> thanks for this info. i'll checkout WebView, see what it can do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My understanding is that with Qt, you can keep your own Qt source compiled (and not shared) and use the open source license of Qt, but must dynamically link to the runtimes, list the open source license in your application directory, and list a URL where people can download the source of those Qt runtime DLLs that you are linking.

Also, I found the widgets sub-par to modern interfaces you see on the web today. Let me give you a good example. Do you know those "Check All" checkboxes at the top of grids to check all the checkboxes on the left column of a grid? Yeah, to do that with Qt widgets requires subclassing and intercepting paint events. To me, that's a kludge. So then there's QtQuick. When I compared what I could do in QtQuick compared to what I could do with Webkit/jQuery/CSS, I wondered why be hampered by the limitations of QtQuick when I could just get it all in Webkit/jQuery/CSS. So, I opted to build my stuff in Webkit/jQuery/CSS and use the C++/Webkit bridge that adds an object to the DOM that I can interface with jQuery. The other advantage is that I can hire a web designer (cheaper than a C++ coder (who, often have poor interface skills, anyway)) who knows a bit about jQuery/CSS to design the interfaces for me (they appear in the upper left corner of a web page). We make them web server-less -- they load with file:// handles. Then, I still have the option to IFRAME web content as well as use REST-like APIs (JSON or XML) via jQuery to interact with the web server, or let the C++ interact with the web server over REST-like APIs. The other great reason to use Webkit is because it has a vast library of freely explained techniques for great interface widgets.

There was also a mention about charts. I use Chartjs.org inside my Webkit interface.

The only drawback about going with this Webkit technique is that it does increase the size of your project considerably. On Windows, there's no getting around this. However, on the Mac, the way I got around it was to take my Webkit interface and port it to Objective C/C++ (and try to keep most of it in C++ because I find ObjC quite messy and bizarre, and because I can wrap ObjC stuff in C++). I use a Webkit widget on a form, and it uses the native webkit that comes with the Mac. Therefore, the installer download is tremendously smaller. I then ported the Qt/C++ code into ObjC/C++ -- that wasn't easy, but was manageable for any trained C++ coder.

<comment><USER18> "C++ coder ... often have poor interface skills, anyway" ... troll inside

<comment><USER17> I'm not trolling. Someone told me, "Hey, you're a C++ coder. You have like no design skills. I've seen your stuff. It needs work." The investor then brought in a UI expert and wowed me. It was then that I realized, "Wow, I don't have good UI skills." I imagine this is probably the case with many C++ coders. Sorry to offend if you're an awesome UI expert AND a C++ coder.

<comment><USER18> So, if you "don't have good good UI skills" please stop your comments about QtQuick ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> TODO: Hello World Exercise

#include <QCoreApplication>

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { QCoreApplication app(argc, argv); return app.exec(); }

</comment><comment><USER20> Anyone have a good Qt 5 book? Preferably one that uses QML and Python.

</comment><comment><USER18> Any comments about android service support ?

<comment><USER16> Apparently Android services is now in 5.7. This is good news because i need them. I've been working to supercede my Java app with QtQuick and replacing the services was going to be a problem.

I havent tried the Qt services yet (plan for next week). I hope they work!</comment></comment>


JPMorgan Chase Paid Its Fine for the 2008 Mortgage Crisis with Phony Mortgages - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenation.com/article/how-americas-biggest-bank-paid-its-fine-for-the-2008-mortgage-crisis-with-phony-mortgages/ <comment><USER2> One thing you can always count on in this world, a bank error will always be in the bank's favor.</comment>


When Django Fails? (A response) - <AUTHOR> http://lazypython.blogspot.com/2009/11/when-django-fails-response.html <comment><USER2> From the comments:

> The biggest issue I have is that model syncing fails

> silently (it's as if the app doesn't exist) if an

> import in the app models file dies with an exception

> (for instance, not found).

I've wasted hours trying to figure out those kinds of silent failures... it's not much fun. Another one that stopped me in my tracks for about an hour is that an app must have a models.py file to run unit tests, even if your application doesn't have any models. If it's not there, instead of just saying 'models.py not found' it says something like 'application <your app name> could not be found'. As others have said though, I guess that's the price you pay for the luxury of having a framework to do the low-level dirty work for you.

<comment><USER3> I don't consider the tests.py issue to be "part of using a framework" its just as bug. However solving the problem properly is a harder problem (right ow djangos app cache is a part of the orm, the right fix is to have a real app cache that doesn't kow about models, ad let the orm have its ow cache that just deals with models).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> but it doesn't do a good job of explaining what to do when your database isn't up to date. Geo django also gives horrible error statements (none at all when the libraries aren't installed right).

</comment><comment><USER5> are these sort (flame-inducing) of articles really worth having on the HN front page? I flagged it.

<comment><USER3> I'm the author (although not the submitter), I didn't intend this as any sort of flame-bait, I was just curious how well Django did at this stuff (a long time ago I remember seeing a better error message wiki page).

<comment><USER6> Great article! I wouldn't worry about the people who didn't read the article and are getting upset about the perceived content, maybe they will learn an important lesson about jumping to conclusions. While it's obvious that the title is what is causing the negative comments, having actually read the article I have to say that the title is appropriate. Thanks for writing this up!

<comment><USER5> No, I read it and thought it was much more reasonable than the Rails one with a similar title. The problem was that it was _in response to_ the Rails article, which was of very low quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Django fails, Ruby fails, Java is dead...what's next? _sigh_

<comment><AUTHOR> No offense but I'm getting the impression that you (and grandalf) haven't read past the title here.

Nobody is saying "[Django|Rails] fails as a tool/project/framework", the topic here (and in the related submission about Rails) is _how do the tools we use respond to error_ , how clear is the message we are given and weather or not these responses could be clearer or friendlier. In short, "useful error messages".

I think it's an interesting and useful topic of discussion and I submitted this link to be complementary to the story about Rails (though I admit I probably should have just added it in a comment to that story), not to some how put Django against Rails (which seems to be a point of misunderstanding) or to put Django itself down (which wasn't anyone's intent).

<comment><USER7> Yes I didn't read past the title because the title itself is a turn off to me.

<comment><USER8> Then please, don't comment. The cliche "don't judge a book by its cover" comes to mind.

Do you often judge articles by their titles and then proselytize to your peers?

<comment><USER9> To be fair, he could ask if the article is worth reading because he felt turned off by the title. The title is at least a bit inflammatory and the article is the complete opposite of it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should I also sell on Amazon? - <AUTHOR> I'm writing my first eBook about micro-entrepreneurship that's called Start With A Side-Project.
So far I'm only offering it on Gumroad, I actively promote it since I'm a first-time author so I don't expect to be recommended by Gumroad.
How does the discoverability on Amazon works? Will I have to put efforts promoting it there as well? I might as well just focus on promoting my Gumroad page instead of promoting two links. <comment><AUTHOR> For anyone curious, here is the eBook [https://gum.co/side- project](https://gum.co/side-project)</comment>


Expanding offers and VM delivery choices on modern.IE - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/09/16/expanding-offers-and-vm-delivery-choices-on-modern-ie.aspx <comment><USER2> I have the feeling that [https://github.com/xdissent/ievms](https://github.com/xdissent/ievms) will still work better and with less space than Vagrant boxes from MS.</comment>


Ask HN: Best U.S. Cities for developer careers? - <AUTHOR>

I currently live in the NYC metro, which has a lot of great opportunities. I always see lists by places like Forbes that seem to have the usual suspects (SF, NYC, BOS, ATL) consistently, but sometimes have a surprise city.<p>Obviously not of us live in the big metros, so what are some of the other cities and metros that are booming for tech/development? <comment><USER2> I'll throw Seattle at the top of the list. Why?

1\. The job climate here is ridiculous for developers. Just today, I had a tech recruiter tell me that they were diversifying into designers, etc. because the market is so tight.

2\. In addition to many jobs, there are lots of interesting and sexy companies to work for...big to small, consumer and b2b, and so on.

3\. Quality of life

4\. Cost of living

The main drawback here is that we don't have a huge VC community like SF, NYC and BOS. So, if you're gonna do a startup, be prepared to travel to raise money.

Naturally, I'm biased because I live here, but there's a reason for that--see above. Also, my company is hiring: [http://jobs.rover.com](http://jobs.rover.com).</comment>


You're the Smartest Guy In The Room ... but please, try to restrain yourself. - <AUTHOR> http://www.plope.com/smartest_guy_in_the_room <comment><USER2> I was with him until he said "I could care less".

Couldn't damnit, _could not._ This irks me to no end.

</grammar nazi>

<comment><USER3> I commend you, good sir, and assert that you are no grammar nazi. A nazi is crude, unreasonable and thoughtless. You are none of these things. You have merely demanded a minimum amount of effort from the people around you, an infinitesimal moment spent in quiet reflection that could perhaps result in a magical epiphany resembling, "Wait a minute, if I could care _less_ , that means I am caring _more than the minimum! That is not what I am trying to express!_ Alack, I must duly backspace."

Edit: And to whoever downvoted this man, I officially call you a knave.

<comment><USER4> It is important to write correctly. If you allow "I could care less" to congeal on top of "I _couldn't_ care less" in one big idiomatic mess, you more or less lose the ability to express "I could care less".

A more extreme example that also bothers me to no end is "begs the question." Its now quite impossible to use this phrase to call out the logic error to which it originally referred as it is now used interchangeably with "raises the question". When I want to call the error, I have to do a mini exposition on circular reasoning. I feel cheated out of this fine piece of language.

There's a difference between nazism and simply insisting on correctness. I also commend.

<comment><USER5> I disagree with almost every single response in this entire thread, so I don't know where to begin. The use here is idiomatic, as many people have pointed out. The intonation contour of the phrase is completely different than the non-idiomatic usage. I think that those people who say that there is no intonation difference are simply not consciously sensitive enough to intonation to realize that there's a difference. Another example might illustrate intonation differences more clearly, even though the nature of the difference in the example is different than that in _could care less_. There is a difference between the intonation of _black bird_ meaning a bird that is black, and _black bird_ meaning a specific type of bird known as a black bird. The former has a relatively flat intonation contour, while the latter has definite stress on the initial word. So, there you go: we have the exact same word mapping to two different referents, but people can somehow distinguish which referent is meant based solely on the intonation contour. (Let's not get into a discussion of the definition of 'word', but it suffices to say that _black bird_ is two orthographic words in both cases, but one lexical item in the latter case and two in the former.) So, the fact that there's a difference in the intonation of _could care less_ means that listeners can distinguish between the literal and idiomatic uses, and the intended meaning is perfectly clear. As someone else points out, Steven Pinker has happened to analyze this exact phrase in _The Language Instinct_ , and he concludes it comes from a sarcastic interpretation of the original literal meaning. For those of you sitting in your armchairs who don't agree with his analysis, all I can say is that he's a highly respected linguist who knows what he's talking about.

We still say _room and board_ even though _board_ no longer means food. Should we stop using that collocation because it includes an obsolete word? We say _a little bird told me_ even when a little bird did not, in fact, literally tell you something. Furthermore, birds can't tell anyone anything, because birds can't talk, so the phrase logically doesn't make any sense either. But we still use it, because it doesn't need to be 'logically' consistent to communicate meaning. So it doesn't matter whether _could care less_ 'logically' makes sense based on its literal meaning — its literal meaning is not the meaning people ascribe to it when used idiomatically. Even more importantly, though, the surface form of language is not necessarily 'logical', simply because it's so complex under the surface that it's unintuitive what's going on. It doesn't make any everyday sense that subatomic particles exhibit quantum tunneling and entanglement and all sorts of other strange phenomena, because the underlying physics is so ridiculously complicated that it has to be studied in minute detail before a real picture emerges.

Another similarly uninformed objection, along the same lines of reasoning, that I often hear people make is that we 'should' eliminate redundancy from language. They say that's why double negatives and words like _irregardless_ are 'bad'. But Spanish has double negatives and they're perfectly grammatical, so what's wrong with having them? If you use a word like _irregardless_ , everyone understands what you mean perfectly, so what's wrong with using it? Furthermore, as hackers you should all realize that redundancy is good. Having a multiply redundant array of disks makes sure there's not a single point of failure, and having multiply redundant backups means that you don't go down like Ma.gnolia. Speech is a signal, and signals experience loss, attenuation, interference, etc. A word like _irregardless_ — with redundant affixes in it — may very well be far more communicative in noisy environments. Even if the end of the word is cut off, people can still reconstruct or extrapolate what was said. And remember, the point of a word in spoken speech is to communicate. How do you know usage hasn't shifted to that form, as a preference over _regardless_ , for exactly that reason? The answer is that you really don't.

There are processes at work in language change that you don't have any control over by being a nazi or a pedant. The language changes, whether you like where it goes or not. And it's twelve steps ahead of you, because it's changing to satisfy or maximize requirements and utility functions that none of us can even begin to understand fully.

Second of all, this isn't a syntactic issue in the first place, so it's misleading to call yourself a grammar nazi. The sentence 'I could care less' is perfectly syntactically valid. This is purely an issue with the lexicon. And if you're going to be a lexicon nazi, there are a few things you should know about the lexicon. First, it's one of the most rich, fluid, and dynamic aspects of the language, and changes the fastest. Trying to keep it 'pure' or stop it from changing is not possible. Second, lexical differences are present across a multitude of axes: geographic, socioeconomic, gender, etc. There is no 'correct' lexicon, therefore there is nothing for you to 'correct' about the way someone else is speaking.

Third, I really don't like how so many people on HN have a general attitude of anti-authoritarian superiority, but then you get these sort of rambling hypocritical threads where people pounce on perfectly legitimate uses of language. People pounce like that in other places, but it doesn't bother me so much because it's not coupled with the anti-authoritarian bent. The kind of prescriptive rules you are discussing are essentially a marker for whether someone has been educated or not. Those who do not have access to education, for whatever reasons, do not learn the prescriptive rules that allow you to write in a manner that sounds educated. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the way hillbillies or inner city black kids talk — it is demonstrable that their language follows the same kind of rules as Standard American English, and are just as logical and consistent. It's ironic because, in certain respects, those dialects are _more_ logical and consistent than SAE. So by making these sort of glib, ad hominen, red herring remarks whenever anyone makes a grammatical 'error', you're really just reinforcing the entire system. Note that I'm not making any value judgment or stance on the existence of a prestige dialect, or on anti-authoritarianism itself; it's just that I find the combination of the two hypocritical. This entire thread gives me the same feeling I get when you hear Victorian era drawing room discussions about how the savages in Darkest Africa and Oceania and the Orientals have to shown the light about the superiority of 'correct' Western culture. In hindsight, those opinions are so black and white as to be laughable, because there is so much nuance involved just in the question of what the words _correct_ or _superior_ even mean.

Hmm, I didn't realize how much I wrote until I just posted this. If I had a blog I guess this should be a blog post.

<comment><USER6> The fact that language changes is often, as you do, presented as a reason and justification for a change under discussion. However, that is plainly false reasoning and we need solid arguments as to why we should accept certain changes.

I resist change where I feel it makes a language less clear. There's nothing authoritarian or conservative about that stance: it's about plain usability. When someone says 'I could care less', where I expect 'I couldn't care less', then I get confused. I take extra time parsing and interpreting the sentence, _for no reason whatsoever_. There's already a perfectly applicable string of words to express what someone wants to express, which includes the 'not'. Leaving out the 'not' is not about 'creating a new idiom'. It's laziness or ignorance and both cannot be excused by 'meh, language changes'. Neither is a solid argument to change a language.

I appreciate your arguments in favor of 'irregardless', 'room and board' and the blackbird and found them enlightning, but I fail to see how these apply to 'I could care less' or 'begging the question'. Those two can be explained just fine by laziness and ignorance on the part of the user.

<comment><USER5> I'm not presenting it as a reason or justification, but as a fact. You, personally, are unable to engineer the course of the language, and your resistance to a change does not stop the change from occurring. The language does not need your acceptance for change to occur. It may seem to you like it's changing for no reason whatsoever, but that's only because — sitting there in your armchair — you're unable to come up with a good reason off the top of your head.

Saying that it takes you longer to parse the sentence is anecdotal nonsense, because there's no way for you to measure that without doing a controlled psycholinguistics experiment.

What I said was fairly clear, but to be explicit, _room and board_ is relevant to _could care less_ because it shows that forms can fossilize. It does not matter that _board_ doesn't mean 'food' anymore, just as it no longer matters that _could care less_ means the opposite of what it would literally. You don't mention my example of _a little bird told me_ , but it is relevant because it shows that idioms do not have to be interpreted as the literal sum of their parts (and, in fact, by definition, aren't).

You're missing the point of just about everything I originally said, and you really don't address any of the arguments I brought up, other than to say you fail to understand them.

<comment><USER6> _It may seem to you like it's changing for no reason whatsoever, but that's only because — sitting there in your armchair — you're unable to come up with a good reason off the top of your head._

That's basically "you cannot prove there isn't a good reason". That's the case by definition. The burden for justifying the change lies with those supporting the change.

 _Saying that it takes you longer to parse the sentence is anecdotal nonsense_

There is nothing anecdotal about my _experience_. If I have to blink and think twice about what someone is saying, then he is using nonstandard idiom.

 _it shows that forms can fossilize_

That stuff _can_ fossilize, doesn't mean we should _let_ it fossilize. You're rehearsing the fallacy I was pointing out: 'could care less' is not fossilized and there is no bloody reason to allow it to fossilize. Moreover, you're comparing something that used to be standard idiom and has fossilized in that state with something that is changing and may fossilize in that new, changed state. The argument for the first rests entirely it's history and age, both of which the second lacks.

<comment><USER5> _The burden for justifying the change lies with those supporting the change._

You're the one categorically claiming that the way people talk is somehow 'wrong'. If you want to make that claim, you need to support it. Without going into highly technical details, I explained some ways why the usage could make sense. Your response was simply to say, as if declaring it somehow makes it true, that there is no reason for the usage.

 _There is nothing anecdotal about my experience. If I have to blink and think twice about what someone is saying, then he is using nonstandard idiom._

By definition your experience is anecdotal. I doubt you have to think twice when someone says it, but we'd have to subject you to an experiment to be sure. But simply put, there are so many cognitive biases that may potentially be at work that you really can't reliably judge yourself whether it takes you longer to process. Sentence processing happens on the order of tens of milliseconds.

 _That stuff can fossilize, doesn't mean we should let it fossilize._

You're assuming that you have some control over whether the use develops in the language. I'm saying that's a flawed assumption and that you don't.

If you're so sure the usage is wrong, it may be interesting to note how many hits there are for each phrase in Google's index:

      2,220,000 for "could care less"
      1,410,000 for "couldn't care less"

I readily admit that this, too, is anecdotal evidence. But it's quite telling, no?

<comment><USER7> How would you describe the use of "it's" to mean "of it", or "its" to mean "it is"?

"Wrong" is the word I'd use, regardless of what definition _you_ wish to give that word. What word or words would you use?

<comment><USER5> The presence of the apostrophe is an orthographic convention and has nothing to do with language in the least. There's no apostrophe in _it's_ when people pronounce it.

<comment><USER7> Hmm, I'm intrigued by your assertion that orthography has nothing to do with language, but indeed you're right that this is an issue which relates to spoken language, so I'll ask a different question:

How would you describe the use of "isn't" where "am not" is generally considered grammatical?

For example "I isn't a liar" rather than "I am not a liar".

<comment><USER5> Again, you're missing the point. I can't prescriptively judge whether something is grammatical or not, nor can anyone else. Grammaticality isn't something which someone decides — a grammatical sentence is by definition a sentence which speakers of the language produce and understand. It is grammatical if people use it. If there is a particular dialect of English where they use _isn't_ as the first person singular form of the copula, then it is grammatical.

It would not be grammatical in the standard American English dialect, which I think is what you're getting at. But you have to be careful with your terms here, because in the technical sense 'grammatical' means an acceptable sentence of the language, whereas I have a feeling your understanding of 'grammatical' means 'how we were taught to write in school to communicate to other people that we have been educated'. My entire point is that there's a difference.

You would probably call the sentence

      He been had that job.

completely ungrammatical. In Black Vernacular English, however, it's perfectly acceptable. What's more, depending on the pronunciation of _been_ , this sentence can communicate a tense that doesn't exist in standard American English. In SAE it can only be communicated by adjunct material like 'for a long time'. Ostensibly, this is more efficient.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Eng...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is basic strategy really - being a dick to people will almost never bring you closer to a goal you've set, which means there's no point in doing it. The success rate of "calling people stupid until they agree with me" is quite low...

<comment><USER9> I think it depends on your intent. Being a dick is a clever strategy if you want attention. Being a dick by calling someone very popular (or visible) stupid gets you attention. Instead of people ignoring the dick, they pile on and then criticize him -- which is giving him attention. Then, people who find some reason to agree with him pile on and defend him. Bamb, the dick has now usurped some of the targets authority.

(P.S. I am not defending this strategy. I find it annoying -- but entertaining in a checkout line gossip rag type way.)

<comment><USER10> "Being a dick is a clever strategy if you want attention."

Imma let you finish, but BEYONCE HAD THE BEST VIDEO OF ALL TIME.

<comment><USER9> Well played. He was one of the examples I had in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know who this is for, except it's not me, but, after reading it in with no person in mind, i read it again, like it was adressed to me, and i thought "He's right"

</comment><comment><USER12> Copy of article text: <http://dpaste.com/hold/100477/>

<comment><USER13> ... which is relevant since Chris seems to have removed the original from his webserver

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Parents and teachers need to take part of the blame for making a big deal out of innate intelligence.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can someone from the python community say if this is pointed at someone in particular?

<comment><USER16> Zed Shaw maybe?

<comment><USER17> It could be Zed, but the funny thing is in that case, Zed got 100% test coverage for Lamson done about a month ago.

<http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2009-08-22.html>

<comment><USER18> So, it's not pointed at Zed.

Who else?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The guy who introduced me to Python originally had that kinda dickish attitude, and for some dumb reason I assumed the whole Python developer community was like that. It really biased me against using the language for quite some time, which is a shame because now I've come to really like it.

The moral of the story: some people have Asperger's, and you shouldn't let their (pathologically?) contemptuous attitudes affect you.

</comment><comment><USER20> This article has described elitism. Humility is the true sign of intelligence.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've seen people around me trying to unnecessarily add irrelevant technical jargon to the simplest of matters which they want to tell me. In 99% of the cases, it turns out to be something I have a _really_ good laugh on.

</comment><comment><USER22> It is worth nothing that just because something is an active community project doesn't mean that it's the right way to do things. And also, just because the right way to do things is not implemented in your favorite langauge doesn't mean that the wrong way is not wrong.

</comment><comment><USER23> I can always tell the smartest guy in the room types, my solution? I talk about my visual basic projects and what a great language it is. It's a great game to play.

</comment><comment><USER24> Site is down. No Google cache yet either...

</comment><comment><USER25> The tone is hilarious. Love the build up.

</comment><comment><USER26> Brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER27> You know many people actually try to intentionally not become something like the intended audience of that article. People around us can be really dumb, you know like in a high school (or like in my case even college). Now the key here becomes not to let yourself be pampered by such pseudo eliteness. I always try to be with people who have a greater intellect than me, just so i can beat them. but when i cant help it, i make it a point to keep reminding myself this is not the crowd i can judge myself with

</comment><comment><USER28> Is that the "permafrost" Stevey wrote about?

</comment><comment><USER29> I find it a little ironic that the server hosting this article is down.

<comment><USER30> Why that would be ironic?

<comment><USER31> We get it, you're the smartest person in the room, you know the definition of irony, you are not Alanis Morissette.</comment></comment></comment>